A Few Simple Questions

Is there a level of cowardice lower than Donald Trump? After a few weeks of off-and-on posturing about “getting tough with Russia,” Trump has boldly reasserted what was never really in doubt, namely that Vladimir Putin owns him and always has, and that Trump will happily go down in history as the man who served as Putin’s battering ram into the gates of Europe in order not to displease his one and only master. Slavish cowardice, plain and simple.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is fond of suggesting these days that Trump, rather than she, is the real “traitor” because Trump is working for “foreign leaders.” By this I take her to mean that he is serving the wills of Israel and the European Union. If, on the other hand, she meant that he was working for a Russian dictator, then I would at least respect her willingness to reject her MAGA hat fully and finally. That, however, is not what she meant. Is she then, as I believe, still quite fine with Trump’s being (as he has been all along) an agent of her country’s current and historical enemy in the Kremlin, but just not of America’s actual and historical allies?

Is Trump Putin’s agent on the global stage because he knows Putin has dirt on him (the Epstein threat in another guise), or because, as per his usual motivation, he genuinely sees his own personal material advantage in giving Putin whatever he wants? Those are the only options on the table, as far as I can see.